To keep your smile healthy and strong for life, you may have to pursue specific dental treatment. This can range anywhere from restorative care for tooth decay to orthodontic treatment to straighten your smile and virtually everything else in between. When it comes to threats to your oral health, typically, the sooner you seek care, the better the outcome can be, and our team is ready to help. In today’s blog, your Gainesville, TX dentist discusses the many benefits of treating cavities with a dental filling, including how treatment is minimally invasive and can be customized to your individual needs.
Understanding Cavity Development
Your teeth are some of the toughest bones in your body. Even still, they are not immune to the effects of a poor preventive routine and serious dental decay. You see, oral bacteria that lurk in the hard-to-clean areas of the mouth may produce destructive acid that eats away at your natural structure. This creates a small hole in a tooth known as a cavity. Over time, the hole will become larger as the infection works its way deeper into your tooth. Without timely dental intervention, you run the risk of losing the entire tooth to infection and potentially threatening the health of surrounding teeth.
To prevent the spread of decay, your dentist may recommend a dental filling if you are deemed a suitable candidate. This is a restorative procedure involving the removal of the infection and filling the clean, open cavity with filling material. Factors to consider for candidacy include the stage or severity of dental decay present, how healthy your tooth or surrounding teeth are, and more. Give our office a call to learn more about cavities and your treatment options.
How a Dental Filling Mitigates Decay
Once a tooth infection has been established, it will not go away on its own. Because of this, it is important to seek timely dental care to prevent the infection from spreading and threatening your surrounding healthy teeth. In order to prevent the infection from spreading, however, your dentist will need to remove all traces of the infection itself. That includes the damaged and decaying portions of the structure.
What to Expect from Your Appointment
The day of your appointment, we encourage you to eat before you come into the office. We will then prep you for the procedure, including numbing the area. Once the area has become suitably numb, we will carefully but thoroughly work on removing the infection and cleaning the cavity. After this, we will fill the hole with a tooth-colored dental material that we then cure using a special light.
Call Our Office to Learn More Today
When caught early on, tooth decay can be easily managed with a restorative filling. Schedule your next dental appointment with the team at Grand Avenue Dental in Gainesville, TX, by dialing (940) 668-9000. We serve patients in Gainesville and surrounding areas, and we are currently welcoming new clients.